The vision of a productive Australian high school classroom often revolves around fostering positive relationships and supporting students’ learning journeys. But how accurate is this perception in today’s mainstream education system? Do teachers and students communicate effectively to maintain a harmonious environment? And how does this compare to the approach of an independent specialist school like MOB Academy?
As part of his final Social and Community assignment, Tyson, a Year 12 student at MOB Academy, explored these questions. His thoughtful reflection delves into the contrasts between mainstream schools and MOB Academy, shedding light on the unique strategies and values that make MOB a nurturing space for students to thrive.
Read Tyson’s submission below to discover his insights on the power of respect, connection, and understanding in creating truly positive learning environments.
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The perception of Australian schools, especially high schools is overall good. Although there will always be problems grouping pubescent teenagers together in the same place for 6 hours a day, there are strategies used by teachers and mentors to prevent dangerous activities and other things that might avert kids and other people from learning in classrooms and outside. An ideal Australian high school is a safe and inclusive environment with perceptive, resilient students who attend with the goal of learning and who achieve that goal every school day. In the classroom teachers care, they are there not only for teaching but to understand each student and their needs, how they learn and the best way to aid their education.
Consistently mainstream schools try to use mainstream concepts of classroom management including, seating charts, suspensions and threats to manage a classroom as the person “in power.” This usually results in arguments and fights putting people down and causing resentment for certain teachers, causing students to refuse to learn and behave for certain resented teachers. Unlike mainstream schools, MOB aids to individual learning abilities putting students in environments where learning is encouraged. MOB uses teacher-student relationships to involve students in their work and make connections to learning with anecdotes and allow a more relaxed classroom without rules but with values students adapt to become not better learners, but better people in their life. Teacher-student relationships are essential for everyone to be felt heard, safe and cared for in a school environment. Teachers at MOB understand this and have connections with all students, sometimes ones they don’t even teach. Mainstream schools don’t have individual connections with every teacher and student causing learning to be strained when students don’t feel obliged to listen or understand someone, they don’t know trying to tell them what to do.
Seating charts cause nothing but hostility not just towards the teachers, but towards seating partners as well, taking students out of a comfortable and safe environment and putting them in situations they may or will not enjoy. Seating charts in a teachers view, are supposed to limit talking and make students do their work. Students who aren’t sat next to their friends will do their work and usually stay quiet during lessons. This isn’t always the case. Seating charts cause conflicts between students and students and teachers. Students in a seating chart may not like the person their seated next to and conflicts may arise from being segregated away from their friends. The repercussions of a seating chart may have a ripple effect on the classroom. If one student has a complaint about the seating chart, then other students will voice their opinions, causing an out-of-control classroom and a dumbfounded teacher who used to a seating cart to allow a quiet environment for learning, but instead now has an uproar of angry students not listening to him. To resolve an above situation is to just stop using a seating plan. Admitting the strategy, you used is hard for teachers especially to a class of teenagers, but it’s necessary for conflict to be resolved within the classroom. Teachers can remove the seating plan and still have control over the classroom without angering students.
At MOB he teachers have connections to each student on a personal level which makes communication easier because students reciprocate the respect their shown by teachers who listen to them and the problems they may have. Mainstream schools focus on using the power they as teachers to hold over students when communicating. MOB uses mutual respect as the perfect strategy to understand a student’s needs and problems.
MOB’s success for helping students to not only graduate but to become better men is unseen in mainstream schools. MOB’s classroom management is great not because the strategies they use, but because of the connections built with the students and the respect they show for the students and choices they may make. Mainstream teachers need to understand the power they have as teachers is non-existent to students who feel disrespected, without respect conflict in classrooms will always arise and cannot be managed by teachers who do not understand the student.
